Experienced, passionate & hard working Web Design & SEO Strategist who shares creative and logical thoughts with business owners to help their organization grow and engage their customers using the means of responsive website design, search engine optimization, paid search, social media and content writing.

Rand, I must say, I have been ignoring the small little blue boxes inside OSE for about a couple months, but today was different. I clicked on the LEARN MORE link and BAM here I am reading something else that's helpful in our strategy but also pretty damn cool.

Reading through your tips, it's pretty simple to use and can't wait to begin testing things for our company first, then expanding and implementing for each of our SEO clients.

Thanks and getting it upgraded as well and sharing all your details about how to effectively use the tool! - Patrick

+3 points on only 6 predictions for 2014... Nice job! Now you have 10 predictions and eager to see those results in January 2016. But, let's not get ahead of ourselves as we have another long year of ever changing online and offline marketing strategies to look forward to.

Your 2015 predictions don't seem to be that far fetched, which I like. They are more realistic and I think your score next year will prove this.

Your 6th prediction is something which has already started I believe. Many marketers are seeing trends in how to measure traffic sources within Google Analytics or some of the other big name analytics players. With the rise in those mobile device users and the latest in the SSL/Https sphere, proper attribution is, as you mention, going to be really tough to show your client(s) or superiors as it's not measurable to any specific effort... Unless you go the paid marketing route.

Maybe it's time to look elsewhere for analytics which can deliver that data, but so many of them are out of the budget for smaller web firms like ours. Then again, we don't have the clients which support the larger budgets either. It's a catch 22 for us small guys in showing results.

Thanks overview you put together for us, Josh! I'm a little late to the game on commenting, but making up on my reading time this morning :)

Not many people understand the impact of "their" Do's and Dont's. However, we all know it is subjective and leaves more of their clients and networking partners confused when the real experts step in with their analysis. Such as yours. This information helps me, after reading and absorbing, to become a better SEO and web marketing... and web designer, too.

All great points made in your WBT, however, your bit on Reviews stands out and is attractive to me these days when speaking with clients. One which we are also actively pursuing to earn more of across the web. And it was excellent advice about not being local and still pushing to obtain reviews online through BBB, Wikipedia or reputable forums. I know it's not "new" per se, but it's still very relevant in a web marketing campaign. "How can we get more reviews?" is a question we're asked a lot... Now, I have some more ammo going into meetings with resources like this to share.

Happy 10yr Anniversary, Moz! Great video, Rand and from someone who only got started in the community back in 2011/2012, it's nice to see all the progression from 2004 and whopping 8yrs already up and running before I got with it and subscribed. You've helped me grow from just doing HTML websites to now doing much more in that field, but also now helping clients get found online. I'm learning something new everyday and checking the QA and Moz Blogs is one of my first tasks of the day.

Thank you! And cheers to many, many more years and me being a part of the evolution of Moz! - Patrick

There's nothing wrong with providing the other side of the story to demystify opinions (or believed to be facts) and you can't argue with what has been cited. Everyone has to remember, this is THEE Moz blog, so they wouldn't have put their stamp of approval and publication on it if it were to damage another SEO or company or if it wasn't of sound advice. I, personally, enjoyed reading this information as it can only help create more educational material to pass along to our clients. Plain and simple.

If everyone is going to get hung up on SEO tactics getting busted for not working or even existing, then Matt Cutts and his team would be at the helm. They dictate the rules. Brian from Backlinko (who has really great ideas and content), Gianluca and many others in the industry do not. So, take this for what it's worth. Furthering our education about what is working and not working and what to share as relevant information with our clients.

Thumbs up on your 1st WBF, Gianluca!! Very cool and I'm sure you were a bit nervous, but it didn't come across in the video. Reason being, you know what you're talking about and then fall into getting comfortable with the topic as if you had an audience! Great job!

Being your first WBF, I think the comments speak for themselves. You provided some tactful tips for us all to implement. They aren't too complex or over our heads, so that makes it easy to not abandon in trying to implement. So, thank you for that and I hope Moz invites you to do more, whether from Seattle or Italy :)

Maybe Analia's question in the comment above relating to the Google+ # search would be your next WBF or even Moz Post. I'd be very interested in that, as you're right, it's not talked about much and elaboration on the topic could prove useful and beneficial to the community and then worked into client projects/campaigns.

This WBF is especially interesting considering #2. We've been told for a long time that keywords in your anchor text was dwindling, not going to carry as much weight and that diversification should be implemented. I do agree with that, however, we now see Rand promoting the use of keywords in the anchor text as it DOES carry more weight when compared to more generic anchor text like "click here" or "another similar article". It makes sense, but not many have put it into simplified terms as Rand just has! Yes, diversify your anchor text and URLs. When you can and have control over it, link to a keyword that will help your strategy. Great tip! Thanks! - Patrick

Danny and Gianluca, I think you are correct when speaking about and working to implement EMDs. We, like many others, got scared and thrown off from using any more EMDs to rank sites. However, the one's we left, have not dwindled (albeit, we weren't doing any spammy techniques to build rank). Just good, original content was used and site was set up in WMT and Analytics to track. It's interesting to know you both, and I'm sure many others have noticed wasn't as detrimental to their SEO processes and successes. Thanks!

The reviews topic is a great one for local businesses to take into strong consideration. There is a lot of "fluff" and "hype" about obtaining, asking, receiving, soliciting and how-to's for leaving reviews , but the most important piece of all of this is that you do it ethically. Don't go out and buy reviews. Don't go to Fiverr and hire a person reading a piece of paper taped to the side of their computer monitor while sitting in their horribly lit kitchen table to leave you a video testimonial either for that matter. Reviews, whether on the website or within your social sphere or Google+ pages should be earned and voluntary. There is no shame in guiding your clients or customers on how to leave a review, but don't give them an iPad as they are checking out to login to their Gmail account and post a review.

We've heard a lot of tricks and gimics. The Fiverr ones are the best. If you want to kill some time, just go look at the "real" video testimonials $5 can get you!

A great idea which some of our dental clients are using is just leaving small business or post cards at the front desk with all of their social media links/URLs, office contact info, logo, pictures of the dentists and a very quick step by step on how to leave a review in Google, if they felt the service was up to their expectations and enough for them to brag about on the web. It is a hint hint, wink wink to the patient only. Whether they act on it is not chased after by us or our customers.

This is a great article outlining the best ways to earn and obtain reviews, the right way! Thanks for sharing - Patrick

It's great to see Screaming Frog got on this so quickly. As tonygreene mentioned, those working exclusively in WordPress can only hope for the big SEO plugins *cough* Yoast & AIOSEO *cough* to get updated sooner than later for their live preview tools

Dr Pete, thanks for breaking down all the data and use-case scenarios. 55 characters is great to know, but will always take into consideration how subjective the new SERP title tag can be when it boils down to ALL CAPS, bold text, and thin "i" vs wide "W" text/characters.

I'm sure a lot of SEOs are hard at work looking into their websites now to modify Titles, but also hopefully digging into their client sites for review and editing. Great post and comments all around! - Patrick

David, thanks for sharing all the features for Moz Local! I especially love the upcoming feature of "building custom-branded and emailed reports", which small firms like ours can use for clients and getting more and more signed up with the service in the near future! - Patrick

Great article and details about all that can happen with a notice from Google, Marie. The good, the bad and the ugly. SEO's should be responsible and ethical in cleaning up any mess they create, whether they knew about it or not. It's scary to see some of those graphs you present and the huge dip in traffic. It shines a light on that partial and manual actions can affect any website large and small. Thanks for sharing!! - Patrick

Mark, you nailed it. We got a call from a CPA firm who was seeing drops in their rankings over the course of several months. We had a meeting, determined the "SEO" company doing work for them hadn't even set up their own user in the Webmasters account for their site. Once we established our user Webmaster connection, we found the Manual Spam action notice. I quickly informed my client about what it was, what it meant to his website/business and what needs to be done. A) Pay us to clean it up, bring it up to speed and then move forward with SEO or B) Get in touch with the "SEO" company that's been doing the work for him the past 3 years and ask them to clean it for free. He did option B and the company apologized and has been cleaning his links for the past couple months. I have also been communicating with the client and once the spam notice is removed, they will be continuing with us.

To your point, Mark, the business owners need to stand their ground and demand the current SEO company to fix it and also for the SEO company to do the right thing and fix it. If they do not, then move on and if it's true neglect, then legal matters could be in store. - Patrick

Miriam, you rock for the Local SEO articles here. It's so nice to always be able to take something away from each of your pieces to apply... almost as soon as I leave the blog I can jump right in!

Piggybacking off of everyone above who commented, it's a great article and full of useful information. However, no one really pointed out your macro-approach, that of your 1st tip "Check for mass issues". This little tip can save someone a ton of time. Don't get me wrong, everyone above is in need of learning something, but at the micro-level due to a certain specific detail they are searching for, when they may not even know it could be affecting so many more businesses/websites.

Doing a very quick search for mass Google Local issues can be the difference in spending 5 min knowing the cause and explaining in an email or call to the client(s) vs spending an entire day trying to find that one "thing" you "think" it may be!

Thanks for replying, Samuel. We've gone down the road of free stuff for those in need, sponsorship opportunities and supporting charities and some clients have pursued those strategies. Yes, some for strictly business promotion, but others just wanted to get involved and if something came out of it, great. Rotary and Lions Club are some examples.

Quick videos of image slideshows, some music, simple text overlay and maybe a voice over are ideas we are more seriously looking into for 2014 and beyond as any business can then take advantage of web video without spending a ton of money, freaking out in front of a camera, etc.

It's all some sort of PR in the end. It's just how it's pushed out to the public or getting the public to come to you. Thanks, again! - Patrick

Thanks for the insight, Derek. I feel the same about you when breaking down the time spent on a project/campaign for a client and remaining profitable is obviously important to sustain the life of a business. We'll be celebrating 5yrs in August :)

I like your idea of spending a little time research where and how a specific client could get involved in the community, and it's applicable across the board for any business really. I appreciate the tip! All the best for you and Accelerator Marketing! - Patrick

I enjoyed the article, Samuel. I just feel this post is geared more towards SEO/Digital companies who can create, implement and sustain these higher level services like the media outreach (media list creation), PR pitching, high quality PR writing, etc... because A) they have the workforce resources and B) the client's have the budget. I may be totally wrong about that, but it would be challenging to create consistent "News Worthy" content for a local dentist who doesn't have the budget to get videos created, have PR written and then paid to be distributed online, especially when nothing too exciting is happening in his/her office.

I know it can be done for any size business and any marketer or SEO can do the work. It's just a lot, when you don't have experience in PR and with all the changes to the SEO game and Google's search criteria evolving, the learning curve is becoming more steep.

Any quick thoughts on what smaller SEO companies could do to keep PR in the limelight for SEO strategies when working with smaller budgets? Again, great article and thanks in advance! - Patrick

Thanks for the useful and applicable post, Geoff! I admit, I'm not the most savvy when it comes to Google Analytics, but recently I've been learning, setting up different Goals, Custom Reporting, etc. So it was nice to see your list to keep my motivation up! Analytics, not the most exciting tasks in the world, but if setup properly once, then it reaps tons of benefits long term for the SEO's efficiency and the client's understanding of their site performance. - Patrick

It would be interesting to see that more in-depth data, but these higher level views are important to see from the 3,700 participants (myself included). I started my company, just as soon as I could once I knew I could do it, unfortunately it took a few post-graduate years in the field :)

Simply WOW for the "Salary by Education Level" statistic! So, you're basically saying I should've not completed High School and gone right into marketing/internet marketing and been relieved of all the debt?

That is very interesting result from the survey and shows that with some skills you don't necessarily need a HS or college diploma, Masters, Ph.D., etc to be successful or make a good living. I graduated with a BS, Exercise Physiology and went straight into the IT, web, software, internet marketing world, with lots of debt right after graduation.

We also need to work on the "Salary by Gender" gaps to begin to close those down. I never understood how a female doing the same job as a male made less income. It's not logical.

Doing the interviews is such a great idea. You get your questions answered through the minds of others who have been or are currently in your situation. Great post, Stephen!

You're obviously based in the UK, but this article and your troubles stands true to any country, any city, and tech business, really. We're based in Cary, NC just outside of the capital city, Raleigh and south of a major tech and medical hub, so having the ability to sit on the border, be close enough to travel to bigger clients, while working with smaller clients and also have a plethora of talent to potentially choose from was a motivator in relocating the business here. We'll be looking to hire in 2014 and beyond and believe this smaller, more localized market will provide great talent at a more affordable salary range, reduced cost of living and still offer employees an outstanding work environment.

And, I love the section about "Showcase Staff". I feel if my previous employer would've showcased me and my talents and my ideas more with praise or constructive feedback, I wouldn't be where I am today. It's extremely important to make your staff understand they are valued as a person, and professional. We are by no means to the point of having a large office roaming with staff, but when that day comes, you can bet we'll be highlighting and praising each team member in a variety of ways!

Amanda, your article is a wonderful resource for those who feel they "don't have anything to write about". In speaking with clients, we advocate a lot of the ideas you mention, and more importantly, the 'Individual Achievements', 'Events' and 'Internal Resources'.

Each of these happen more often than business owners know about. For example, we just joined the Chamber of Commerce and also BBB Accredited recently, so what did we do... We wrote articles about them to share with our social networks with links back to the full post on our company blog.

The Internal Resources is an awesome tactic and one which gets the business owner and his team thinking. Generating FAQ sections as a new blog category or a new page in the site can be a tremendous online resource for site visitors or if you'd like to share the link in an email while vying for a contract you want to win. It can be much more than just FAQs though as you touch on. Experiences, stories or before and afters are extremely useful for depicting a specific service or a solution you offer to a common problem your visitors have. Relaying those stories and experiences in content and images or graphics can really generate a lot of buzz, social shares and build more trust in a company. We're working on this with a client going through a new marketing plan for their 4 locations and can't wait to see some of the results from the content we are collectively producing.

Thanks again for practicing what you preach with your 'Lists' and 'Industry' experience. It was a fun read! - Patrick

Good information here, Rob. You got a lot of a people thinking, I'm sure. Much like you are thinking these days, the NF, DF links are more about optimizing your content for traffic, not just a link. You should seriously question your profession as an SEO if you refuse a NF link from a site which could send you more and real traffic than a DF link sending zero! I think you highlighted the remark with proof and that is always appreciated to see real data tell the story. Thanks! - Patrick

Spot on with this remark, Maria; "Applied online...Keyword research: No one says it better than THE Kate Morris, "If you want to know what content to write to rank for terms, ask the people who are searching for that topic what they are looking for, and write that. This changes how we do research, but I think for the better." Check in with your consumers early and often, and build content accordingly."

We've begun to start asking this question and requesting clients to do a mini-interview with their customers/clients/patients. It accomplishes several goals:

The business shows it cares about their customers

The business can develop deeper, stronger relationships with customers so they keep returning

The business will understand and apply feedback to make operations run more smoothly

The business can ask for a testimonial OR, even better, get a review online for their product/service

The business will further understand, as you state and Kate Morris mentions, how to target more appropriate keywords, whether it is for organic results or paid ads.

Asking about what keywords they would search for and then implementing their remarks to make them work for you and ultimately them, is what good service design would be online, for their websites.

Inspiring post, Sarah! The 'T' in TAGFEE is definitely defined here and the 'A' in TAGFEE is brought about by your delivery of the information. It could have been soooo boring to read something like this, but you kept it fun, real... authentic! Kudos to Moz and looking forward to your 2014 successes and improvements and you at the helm :) - Patrick

Great feedback and insight on how you may approach a situation we deal with weekly, Pratik! I agree with you that the budget would vaporize pretty fast when working to do tasks the right way and remain as Google friendly as possible for sustainable SEO and content marketing. Scaling up is what we've pushing for in 2014 and beyond, but focusing a lot of effort on making sure we're working with the right clients who want to be a part of the process like you outline... they want to write some of their own content for the blog, they want to not be stubborn about an outdated design from 2009 and upgrade their site layout, they want to know how to make quick posts to their social media platforms using software like HootSuite or others from their phones even. I think that is the hard part... they get scared and overwhelmed that if they don't have the budget to work with us for all we recommend, that they feel lost and can't do any of it. When, in fact, it could work like a partnership whereby we do all of the hard legwork and they can also offset costs by doing just a little work in 1 blog a month or a couple social posts a week, etc.

Thanks for your feedback, Jason and I agree with you that doing valid SEO and Content these days for such small budgets just isn't feasible to create much value. My mantra to all of my clients and prospective clients is, educate, educate, educate. I pass as much information as I can to these business owners, which I know and am confident in reiterating honest, non-snake oil salesman tips and advice and sometimes the blunt truth hurts, but they need to hear it when it comes to any of our services: web design, SEO, content writing, social media management, website security, etc. If these business owners can understand what really is taking place in our internet world, then they can make a better, fact based decision on where to put their money for their internet marketing strategy. We have had to turn down a lot of businesses who either didn't want to take the time to be educated because "they know a guy in their networking group who can do it for $200 a month" or they do get it, but don't have the budget to define the means to invest. Our services do range from a lower say $500 a month to over $1,000, but each client knows the tasks have been clearly outlined and they can do more or less as needed.

It's not going to get easier that's for sure and I do appreciate your response. Educating is crucial. Creating value is second to none.

Interesting article, Pratik. I will start with this... All of your tactics and ideas for A) protecting yourself/your website from a penalty are valid and practical and B) how one should prepare for a penalty sounds extremely challenging to a small business with a small budget.

I get it, these tactics can work for everyone, but honestly, most SEOs reading this and within the Moz community would be hard pressed to implement some of these ideas to prepare for a penalty, even for their own company. For example, say we are working with several local dentists with 1 office. Their budget for SEO/Content is sub $600 per month. And some cringe every month writing the check, while others fully understand it could be MUCH more. Don't get me wrong, I'm just using dentists as an example, but would hold true to any business owner, single location, small business budgets, in any market, in any industry... However, working with all of them on blogging for their websites; now needing to purchase stock photos or get them to take a whole bunch of photos or us taking photos for each blog post; building local citations; setting up and managing the social media posts to keep those pages alive; monitoring; submitting for legitimate guest posts or contributions; press releases when they need... We simply run out of our time for their investment.

Can you help me and I'm sure countless others in providing some quick insight for us to implement some of your "Prepare for a Penalty" ideas into the smaller budget SEO campaigns we tend to work with? I hope you see my point as your post is spot on in doing SEO right from the start, along with being as proactive as possible along the way as a safety net... just thoughts on how to approach on a smaller scale. Thanks in advance! - Patrick

It's always nice to know that I'm not the only one out there scratching my head as to why our Authorship disappeared from the SERPs for a bit. This happened right around Dr. Pete's post in December. We've since recovered authorship and our pretty little images are displaying as they should.

I appreciate the transparency, Ruth. And seeing your "solutions" and their respective results was nice to read how a group of pros worked together with troubleshooting the authorship dilemma. Your bullet points at the end were great and knowing the the Rich Snippet validator tool is behind on getting updated to match with the real SERPS. Love the checking as incognito mode tip you gave all of us as a better way to check our work :)

Tim, great change of pace in the Moz blog landscape for an article discussing a design approach to web usability across all devices/browsers and THEN how it could affect things SEO's worry about ie: time on site, ad placements, navigation flow, bounce rates, page views, content links, etc.

A little breath of fresh air before going back into other SEO focused articles during the day. Thanks for updating the comment for the Inspect Elements change implemented today. Good useful tip, I never even knew about :)

Fantastic guide! Your team did nice job of gathering tons of useful data and facts, organizing it and making it easy and, actually fun, to read, while tossing in your recommendations. Perfect for the beginners AND others who've been in the social game for a while, like myself. I'll never stop learning.

Personally speaking, I jumped right to the Blogging chapter first. Why? Blogs (articles/news/stories/experiences), to me, are what helps feed the social beast from newsletters, Facebook posts, Tweets or posts to G+ or even LinkedIn. When working to create the content for a blog article, either on your website or a guest post, we find lots of tidbits of information we feel we can also share across the social profiles or take polls on or ask questions about. I'm not saying you need a blog to participate in social media, however, working towards developing content for a blog certainly has guided us into publishing more content, posts, and ideas about new topics.

I was also really surprised at the high volume of bloggers in the US alone. 31 million is not a small number, people. As well as, "Nearly 2/3 of influencers earn revenue from blogging, but 80% of them report earning less than $10,000 per year". I had to read that twice as to make sure it was per year and not per month as so many people claim they are making gobs of money online and make $10K+/month. Your data source proves the web isn't a 'get rich scheme' and that the numbers are hyper inflated for most affiliates and "bloggers".

Again, awesome new guide which is bookmarked and hoping to see it on the right side bar for the "Featured Content" in the near future. It's definitely worth sharing and promoting. - Patrick

Blown away at all the information in this article, Matthew. I always make time to read indepth content that help me improve how I operate or take a second look at a process to make it more efficient.

"Reach out to the list of authors and build relationships with them."

"Work with them to create quality content assets."

"Utilise their distribution routes and contacts to build links and social signals to the assets."

The above is no different than physical networking at a local Meetup or other networking event. You've found the event or Meetup location, date and time; visited and began qualifying who you could work with and relevant to your business goals; made introductions; got coffee; shared ideas; began referring business and clients... In this case, built trust in the relationship, created good quality content and obtained links and social shares from their help.

No matter if you're building relationships in person or virtually with authors, it takes time, trust, commitment and reciprocation. - Patrick

Thanks for sharing more tips with the Moz readers, Kalee! A couple questions, how many hours of work are put into these local small business, small budget plans each month? When you say small budget, what has been your experience in the $ amount small businesses don't run away from screaming? $100/month? $300/month? $1,000/month?

It's interesting to read all of your strategies and I agree, the website itself is the first place to start, then all things Google, then the links, then the ongoing content and so. I'm really wondering what you all do for your clients with low budgets so they see/understand the value and hopefully increased rankings and traffic. - Patrick

Right on, Kaila! Helpful information and enjoy knowing that there are some people out there still looking into Directories, Guest Posts, Social Bookmarking, Commenting, Forums, etc... all the things that you hear too many people saying doesn't work and is always spammy. Yes, they are correct when done the wrong way, but you shed light on how to approach those link building strategies the correct way, which is great. Not to mention all of the other ideas you shared. Some of them we need to implement faster and better moving forward, so I appreciate the detailed write-up and all the easy to follow tips and related articles for further learning! - Patrick

Catching up on all my reading and blog feeds and glad I got to yours today... well at 8pm. Nonetheless, it's given me some ideas now to work with this week when developing content for us and clients.

Should we look at your things to avoid and flip them around, ie:

1. Instead of “Choosing keywords that are too broad”, focus on the idea of the keywords you want to rank for in longer tail keywords or even asking questions?

2. Instead of “Keywords with too much competition”, work to obtain rankings for less competitive keywords?

3. Instead of “Keywords without enough traffic”, target keywords that get very little traffic according to the keyword planner, however may deliver more specific searchers to your site?

4. Instead of “Keywords that don't convert”, target ideas which will help searchers finding your site make a decision through linking them to other pages in your site?

5. Instead of “Trying to rank for one keyword at a time”, allow the content being posted to pages and blog articles to develop multiple keywords and phrases that could potentially rank high with very little effort?

If that is what we’re getting at, I agree and know our website ranks for a lot more than we know about. My only objection to all of that is getting the clients to understand it all. In their mind “service + city” which is broad, probably has high competition, has a lot of search volume, may convert better and is a single keyword to most pages ranking is all they have known about or have been told over the years. An attorney or dentist wouldn’t know about all of this and they just want to beat their closest competitor and see their Analytics reports.

It is a challenge for sure and appreciate you sharing your thoughts on what is taking place and what is to be seen in the future of search and content marketing. Thanks, Cyrus! - Patrick

That was a nice Monday read for me, Rand. They aren't all so obvious which was nice to see and get us thinking. Will they happen? When? How? Who's going to be the first to write about it when it does?

When it comes to your comment about Guest Posting, I'm confused even more about what content marketers will be able to do then, if you feel LinkedIn profiles will also increase in terms of "Content Marketing" updates.

If Guest Posts and Infographics (which I know you don't really enjoy based on your WBF a couple months ago) will be considered spammy in a potential future Google update, then content marketing becomes even more challenging as to how to distribute content to either build or earn links. Guest posting, I mean good guest posting, is earned and completed through channels of communicating with blog admins or site admins to have content submitted, approved, rejected or edited to match their specific sites goals in publishing relevant and informational content. How could Google determine what is an earned guest post vs someone paying another to have their post placed on a site when a site could have decent, earned Google PR and decent DA/PA according to Moz? Interesting prediction.

Dr. Pete, thanks for sharing such great information and a breakdown of Authorship for all of us to look into ourselves and track. We did notice a lot of Authorship images being removed from the rankings (not just our sites but our competitors as well) in December and had no idea why. This clearly outlines the reasoning, from your standpoint at least.

I know the images are nice and all to see in the SERPs and the client's get a kick out of it, but honestly, does that really matter moving forward? Isn't more about creating the connection between your blog(s) and your G+ pages? There are still so many websites and blogs out there who have not implemented G+ Authorship, so is Google trying to even the playing field by removing the images from the SERPs?

Working hard to keep up with Google's constant shifts. Thanks for the information, again! - Patrick

XLS files showing a course of action so everyone knows what is to be done and when is crucial. We also use BaseCamp for other tasks and deadlines for our team and any clients who want to be a little more in the know about their online marketing.

Your point 1a. Manual Penalties hit close to home we are working with a new client removing links and getting ready to submit our Reconsideration Request soon. Thanks again for the great post! Thumbs up - Patrick

Happy New Year, Moz Community! Back up and running after a weekend computer crash and reconfiguring the new one and back to contributing with Moz members in the QA and blog reading/commenting in the Moz blog!

I have a nice little list of reading the next couple of days with this 2013 overview. Thanks for sharing and very interested to see how the Moz blog landscape changes and grows in 2014 from the survey results Trevor shared in November. Wishing you all the best this year, everyone! - Patrick

Trevor, thanks for the quick turn-around on the providing us with the data you collected! Of all the paying members of the Moz community, and those who don't pay, I'm surprised at the number of contributors. Were you guys a bit shocked as well or was this about right for what you imagined?

I read some comments about being shocked at how many read posts on their phones or tablets compared to their computers and I think they missed the actual result of your survey. You surveyed us, the people who are most likely at their desks all day working who contribute and read the Moz posts, so of the results you gathered, I'm not surprised to see the high number of us who read the Moz posts from our computers. That is what you were asking, right? You weren't asking about other blog sites or other users outside the community. Some comments turned it into a more generalized view about this. Yes, a lot of people read blogs from their phones and tablets and yes, many do not because majority of the web is not mobile optimized or sites being responsive, however, that being said, the results you are showing was strictly from the 766 Moz users, not a mass public outreach.

I for one, submitted the request for more actionable posts, especially tutorials. Case studies are always great to see as well, since you may have aspects applicable to a client you are working with, so that becomes useful.

"Ultimate Guides" at 0% = Hilarious.

I'm glad I contributed and more pleased to see the data and know your team is now looking to put items into place! - Patrick

Thanks for some more tips, Tim. A couple are over my head, but with some practice and more research could be applicable. Your note, "This data should be used, but has a few major limitations." when talking about GWT Search Queries is spot on. It definitely has major limitations to interpret the data and the keywords are certainly not a full list.

Your article basically nailed it for my meeting with a potential new client today, David. They have dropped in rankings due to the national directories (mainly recruiting sites like Indeed and CareerBuilder). I saw dropped like they got pushed off the face of the Earth, but their have been bumped down as of a few months ago to 4 and 5 positions, yet show #1 in the Local Maps results. So, they are still the first CPA firm ranking technically speaking for "city accounting" keyword. Your screenshots of real search results provided that extra support to our conversation.

Your point of #6 reinforced my strategy as proof of building links to inner pages is a must and remains effective. This business, and the 4 competitors he wants (needs) to outrank, all have links just to their Home page. Thank you for helping me basically close a good lead!

Now, on to read more about the Barnacle SEO concept. Cheers! - Patrick

Great write up and info sharing, Greg! We've got this saved into our folder for Local SEO tips. We've been pushing on Google Authorship ever since we did our testing first and saw results with an increase in local search results, my image showing next to the results and experiencing more discussion amongst clients who ask "How can I have my face show up in Google?" And they were just beginning to grasp the importance of reviews! More and more see our challenges as SEO's with the ever changing search engine ranking landscape. Thanks again for your work on this article. - Patrick

I especially enjoyed the tip (which I didn't know about) to "Optimize title tags of posts". We will be implementing this into our G+ pages as well as client pages. Being that these are a powerful visual component to SERPs, you are spot on with recommending the most relevant keywords and enticing statements (or Call to Actions) are included in that first sentence.

Thanks for sharing and excited to see how G+ continues to evolve. We just claimed our custom URL a couple weeks ago. Cheers! - Patrick

I saw soccer in the post title and instantly clicked to read more. Putting 2 of my passions into an article to simplify an SEO strategy was brilliant, Craig.

We don't do any SEO for eCommerce sites, however, the points you make still resonate with our team for practical purposes. Having 11 strikers or 11 defenders for any game or business analogy is never a good approach. Breaking each component (or position) apart helps clients and internal marketing personnel grasp what each function they are meant to serve and why. Explaining how each channel compensates for another or benefits the overall team in the SEO game is crucial to the success of the campaign. Great piece of content!

Great article, Joost! I particularly enjoy seeing the "Progress Bar" when ordering items online. Not all eCommerce stores use this feature, but it is a blessing in disguise when you see one. Allows you to view what steps remain and access to go back to check an entry relatively fast. Thanks for sharing all the other cool ideas! - Patrick

We've been talking about this for a particular client and some others we have proposals out to, so thank you for creating this piece of useful content, Brian. I enjoy referencing Moz articles and info about topics pertaining to our work or to help a client understand what is working and what may not work. Your post is another great example I will be providing in our conversations with prospects.

In "The Big No-No's" section #3, we didn't know about this one, nor have we implemented it, but nonetheless, a tip we will add to our playbook! - Patrick

Great survery, Trevor. Daily reader here and hope my input from the survey is beneficial :)

What's nice about your survey was that is wasn't too broad and generalized, yet not too detailed either. It was perfect for what you want to accomplish to further improve the Moz blog platform, types of content to approve & post and how to even structure the categories from what it seemed like.

Nice article here, Arjun. Some of these are obvious tactics and others are really cool ideas. It is the implementation of each which strategy which becomes the tricky part. Take for example #13. It isn't always easy to create something exclusive and useful when dealing with small businesses with small budgets. As ideas take time, process to create, and promote, but I would agree they are beneficial in engaging an audience and driving traffic.

We stay away from Blog Roll links and as for the Celebrity idea, yes it could work for the right industry, but a celebrity connection to a local tree care company isn't going to do much good and would be a waste of time.

Kate, thanks for the post to get majority of the SEO community thinking. I, for one, am still working to adapt with the "Topic" level approach vs "Keyword" level strategy. In our experience, clients, especially small business owners have a hard enough time understanding internet marketing and SEO as a whole, so our challenge is to get them to know understand how to utilize goals outside of keyword rankings. Don't get me wrong, we are still going to provide keyword ranking reports as rankings are still considered a KPI. Aside from using Ubersuggest and Google Auto-complete, what do you or anyone else reading this comment recommend for us SEOs who deal predominantly with very small businesses with 1 location in 1 city in order to help educate them on the "Topical" approach? I emphasize on small businesses because we're not all trying to rank for national, regional or statewide keywords or topics for that matter due to much lower budgets. - Patrick

Per the WBF topic, I'd love to see/hear a follow up to this with a bit more substance and less bias. Hope that is a fair, honest way of putting it. As many other mentioned, Infographics are a visual asset, yet so are screenshots, graphics we quickly create in PowerPoint, PS or Flash, in your case. Either way the pie is cut, the visuals are what create some interest as you put, but to further the case against Infographics would be helpful. If the Moz team were to create an Infographic about any topic, I'd bet it would spread like wildfire. I know I'd read it. So, in my opinion, the Infographics or any visual asset for that matter would come down to relevancy of the topic, content within and ultimately WHO created it which would grab my attention to read it... and then, as they hope, share it.

From your reply to JenniferHackett, "On #2 - Ha! I didn't even realize it until now. :-) Re: What makes a good infographic - I think that given my biases, I'm probably not the best person to tackle that one." Do you see a follow up to dig into this some more about what makes a great visual asset over another?

Thanks for sharing your opinions and time in this WBF as I always do take away some value! - Patrick

Thanks, Miriam! We were just discussing this very same topic on Monday in a meeting with a new legal client. We brought up on their projector screen the Moz Local Search Ranking Factors page (http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors) and spent some time reading it and having a nice open conversation. I've already forwarded your post to them so we can chat some more as visuals do help bring things into perspective a bit more.

What stands out to us and something we're working on to educate our current clients as well as our new clients is #19 and obtaining reviews. We hear it all the time "Why would someone care if our ABC company has any reviews?" Your screen grab can help us combat those doubts. GOOGLE cares!! They are pretty much getting the point that Google Reviews are good, but why all the other sites. In all honesty, Google showing the relevant review links from other sites is something I forgot about. Being able to show clients your quick screenshot adds more credibility to our pitch that reviews across the board on the major sites is a good thing, so long as they are positive :)

Rock solid article, Kristina. We started a web design shop only in 2009, then slowly got 1 then 2 then so on SEO clients in 2010. So, we've been a part of this movement and evolution of Google each step and relate a lot of things we did right and wrong starting out to where we are today. The blogger/guest post outreach is now our new focus and your "Online PR" remarks are spot on. It is exactly that! Google's push to help SEO's become better overall marketers is ideal to stay competitive and earn rankings for clients.

Thank you also for the great resources you shared for each section. I've got some reading and note taking in the mix for this evening. - Patrick

Thanks for the useful tips, Rand. We just received emails from Google about getting our G+ vanity URL, so that was pretty coincidental considering your WBF topic. Securing our URL at google.com/+WhiteboardCreations is now set in stone!

Your point of "Think of guest posting as feature writing, not copywriting. Avoid the churn!" stands true for any industry. When you can get guest post sites or bloggers to accept your article it should be about something cool, unique or another way to think about something... Features, you are right! Don't get me wrong, we have successes with your standard "tips" and "how to's" and the like, but you'll grab almost any bloggers attention with an article outlining a special feature, an extreme benefit of a product or service, etc so I feel you're right in getting gambling content marketing to now target more "features" and "unique benefits" rather than just getting listed in a directory or spinning tons of articles with gambling site A anchor text all over. Well thought out article and many of your points can be applied to any niche. Thanks for sharing! - Patrick

phantom, thanks for the quick and to the point article. We've been researching how to get better at or obtain more link profiles for our clients' link building campaigns. Screaming Frog is awesome and now we know we can match it up with OSE's exported information to get a solid grasp on a competitor's linking... And follow your 9 steps! Thanks again for all the useful tips. - Patrick

Kane, you are the man! We use Screaming Frog every day and this is more ammo for the arsenal. We sometimes use SF in meetings with clients or prospects and they are "WOW'd" by how fast it is, then info it gathers and with this new technique, it'll allow us to help them understand what Authorship is and can do while getting us to test more effectively since we're in the software so much as is. Many thanks and your YouTube and this post are now bookmarked! - Patrick

Awesome, thought igniting post here everyone! Great read to help get me out of the "Case of the Mondays".

How about this one...

Google announces the removal of organic search results

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — October 27, 2021 — Google announces that organic search results have no longer become useful to searchers. Rather, Google has unanimously decided the organic, or natural, SERP area is now dedicated to paid ads. Google comments, "We thought this would be better for us to make more money. SEO's should adapt as they have been for our needs since 1997."

Thanks, Gianluca! You hit the nail on the head with "topical optimization". It should be the new way to approach SEO for all agencies and marketers. Yes, words and phrases (keywords) still have a big role, however, when creating sites or content which are rich in topical information, the reach is greatly increased. Enjoyed the read and breakdown of this Google update. Cheers! - Patrick

Such a breathe of fresh air to obtain some useful content creation and distribution techniques over and above the norm: blogs, press leases, social, more blogs, blah, blah, blah. Many thanks for producing such a nicely outlined list for us Moz users to follow and implement. - Patrick

This infographic seems fantastically scary for the SEO industry. So much information which any one of our clients could ask about if they see or wonder how they would appear in a SERP for their service/product. We've booked marked this post and saved the graphic for quick reference. The Mega-SERP will evolve and look forward to an updated graphic in the months to come as we all know Google will change the landscape as and when they need. Great resource here and thanks for sharing all your research! - Patrick

Thanks for the info, Rand. One question this brings to mind for the community, if Google isn't tracking keyword referrals in our Analytics for (not provided) because the searcher is logged into their account, then does the Keyword Planner data remain accurate. If they aren't tracking in our Analytics to "protect users privacy" and not showing us what brought people to our websites or a client's website, then does their keyword tool remain reliable? It would seem contradictory to not show us, yet still track the searches and their respective monthly volume. Anybody have any thoughts on this? Just curious now after listening/watching the Whiteboard Tuesday.

I think we can all agree, domain migrations can get nasty. You nailed it, Ruth! The outline, the tips, etc are everything a business owner should be aware of and us IT, SEOs, web designers, etc should know how to do and combat if an issue arises. Thanks for sharing!!

Damn good post here, SamAntics! We've been developing in WP for years and, yes, have been susceptible to hacks and malware uploads, so this post and the detailed information will help us become more secure and, like you said, aware of what is out there and what could happen, if left unprotected. Many thanks from our team to you!

Incredible how concepts can evolve and shake up a community. SEO's see this more often than not and this is another way to shift the industry, keep us on our toes and our clients even more confused than ever. Informative post and just more tidbits we need to be up to speed with on how the search engines are creating a better user experience. I'm off to learn more.

PS - Thanks for the plugs on the SemTechBiz article, Matthew. This is a great read to know more http://www.seoskeptic.com/key-search-marketing-takeaways-from-semtechbiz-2013/.